


Quality Time

by ThreadSketchier



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Parenting, Gen, Sort Of, in other news, luke sweetie can you maybe not almost die for once, par for the course, search your feels you know it to be true, those damn skywalkers always gotta be Extra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-03-10 16:52:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13505736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreadSketchier/pseuds/ThreadSketchier
Summary: In which battles and brushes with death are pretty much the only time these two melodramatic dorks can ever have a chance to spend some...well, see the title.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was drawerfic from last summer but I finally got the nerve, or craving for validation, to post it. You're welcome, I hope?

The bolt caught him square in the left shoulder, almost spinning him around before knocking him flat, stars flashing in his vision as the back of his skull struck the floor.  The sudden, searing pain left him momentarily breathless and the chaos around him faded to a dull and distant clamor as the horror of what had just happened sank into him.

His left arm was weak now, with an awful sort of tingling numb agony that left him unable to grip anything effectively, and trying the move the limb just made him gasp in pain again.  Most likely his collarbone was either fractured or fully broken by the explosive impact.  Desperately trying not to panic, Luke gingerly rolled himself onto his right side, biting down on a whimper, and struggled up into a sitting position while scooting himself on his backside toward the wall to lean against it.

He froze when he glimpsed the large red trail down the front of his jacket, below the nauseating hole in his shoulder.

That was a  _ lot _ of blood to lose in barely a minute.

_ Oh stang _ , he thought.  The blast must have opened or severed the artery there.  He would no longer have the strength or speed to make it across the hangar to the transport through the crossfire, and even as Luke glanced up he saw the boarding ramp closing, two pairs of arms hauling Wedge into the ship as he fought to break free and run to him, his frantic shouts lost over the din of battle.

_ It’s okay, Wedge.  It’s too late for me _ .

Luke closed his eyes, trying to summon the calm he needed to focus through the pain and smothering sense of futility that he was about to die.  He recalled Yoda’s brief teachings about how the Force could heal and sought out the aura of wrongness radiating from his injury, whispering the mantra of the Jedi Code to himself while attempting to weave life back into his failing body.

And then he heard it somehow, with perfect clarity, all the way across the hangar and beneath the roar of engines and turbolasers.  That familiar and chilling ersatz hiss.

Luke’s eyes snapped open to see Vader standing in the distance, crimson lightsaber blazing, staring directly back at him.

Instantly the calm was broken.  On sheer reflex Luke recoiled, legs drawing up uselessly as if he could burrow his way into the wall behind him.  For a second his prosthetic hand twitched, tightening around the handle of his blaster, and he contemplated bringing its muzzle up to his temple or mouth and just firing.  But as the Dark Lord’s blade extinguished and he began to stride toward him faster than Luke had ever seen him move, a tiny, selfish flare of self-preservation alighted within him - a childish desire that his father would come to save him.

But at what cost?

Mortified and enraged at himself, despairing at his profound misfortune, Luke let the terror consume him, willing his heart to pump faster and harder.  Maybe he could bleed out before Vader could do anything about it.

“ _ Sleep _ ,” Vader growled as he approached, one hand extended like talons.   _ Don’t you dare touch me _ , Luke tried to protest through clenched teeth, but the word struck him like a headlong plunge into deep waters, and he could not resist being swallowed up by the darkness.

 

*

 

Consciousness returned in a patchy, disjointed blur of harsh light, unfamiliar faces, snatches of cold, clinical voices, and the raw, laborious discomfort of being weaned off a ventilator.  Luke was mostly aware but found himself indifferent to whatever was going on, since it was hard to remember anything past a few minutes.

Until Vader reappeared.

The respirator jolted him from his half-sleep into a waking nightmare from which there was no escape; this time he was not in the safety of his own bunk or an Alliance medical unit or even the  _ Falcon _ , and the specter of Vader would not fade away into bitter memory.  Luke’s breath quickened and his fingers dug into the bed beneath him.

With his arms crossed over his torso, Vader remarked in disdain, “You risk your life foolishly for a lost cause, my son.”

The emphasis on the end of the possessive statement reignited Luke’s anger, giving him back some control over his fright.  “Do you really mean it when you say that?”  He wished his voice wasn’t so thin and hoarse.

The black helmet tilted slightly.  “What?”  Vader sounded genuinely perplexed.

“Is that what I really am to you?  A son?”

Slowly Vader’s arms lowered and he came a half-step closer, looming over the bed.  “You are my flesh and blood - ”

“Would you still care about me if I had no power?”

That stopped Vader dead, rendering him a noisy statue.

Just the effort of speaking left Luke feeling drained, but he pressed on.  “Uncle Owen told me you were a navigator on a spice freighter.  That’s all you were to me growing up.  Before Ben told me you were a Jedi.  But you were still my father.  You mattered to me.  Do I matter to you like that?”

No answer came, but Vader turned his head away, suddenly unable to look at him.  Luke heard the creak of leather and knew that his hands, hidden under the cape, now had to be fists.

“Am I only your son as long as I can help you become Emperor?” Luke whispered.  “And if that happened, would you still keep me around?  Or does that throne mean more to you than me?”

“ _ No _ ,” Vader snarled, with a brutal intensity that sent Luke’s heart into his throat.  One gloved hand shot out to seize him by the jaw, and Luke gasped, almost crying out, but the grip instantly loosened into something that seemed nearly like a caress, the fingers withdrawing to sweep his hair back from his forehead.

“No.  You are my child.  You…”  The deep voice faltered, sounding strangely broken.  “You are all I have left.”

“Stop,” Luke pleaded, choking back a sob.  “Please don’t touch me.”

Immediately Vader removed his hand and retreated, turning his back to Luke and stepping away to the far end of the room.  Tears leaked out from the corners of Luke’s eyes and rolled down past his temples; his jagged breathing provoked the muted ache in his shoulder and upper chest, but he couldn’t stifle the tide of emotion.

“Why?” he croaked.  “Father...why did you do this?”

He wasn’t truly expecting an answer, knowing that the immensity of whatever had twisted a man of virtue into a monster could hardly be expressed in words.  And even as he burned with that need to comprehend the horror, part of him was afraid to hear it.  What could have possibly justified this depravity?

Luke shuddered at the memory of his own face staring back at him from the scorched and melted ruin of Vader’s mask.  Just what would make  _ him _ capable of this evil?

“Now,” Vader finally replied, “is not the time for you to hear such things.”

Luke huffed in spite of himself, sniffling loudly.  “S’not like I have anywhere to go anytime soon.”  Well aware that it was a bad idea, he nonetheless propped himself up awkwardly on his right elbow.  “I’m risking my life for what’s right, and you did too once.”

“You would be wise to consider the lengths of Obi-Wan’s deception,” Vader retorted over his shoulder, turning again toward him.  “If he would hide the truth of my identity, neither would he speak of the Jedi’s corruption and hypocrisy.”

“And  _ this _ isn’t corrupt?” Luke asked indignantly, gesturing at the space around them.  “And  _ you _ aren’t?  A father that would do  _ this _ to their own son?”  He balled his prosthetic hand into a fist and brandished it before him, trembling in hurt and outrage and fatigue.

“Tell you what,” he continued, voice shaky but defiant.  “If I am who you say I am...if you really care about me...prove it.  Either let me go, or...or run away with me.”  Luke almost couldn’t believe those last words had come out of his mouth, but it was too late to take them back.  He was already in Vader’s grasp; there was really nothing left for him to lose.  “I don’t know where, just...somewhere.  Far away.  Away from the war.  Just the two of us.  Go ahead and train me yourself.  Not the Dark Side, just the Force.  You were a Jedi once.  You know the teachings.  Believe me, I’d like to see the Emperor gone just as much as you.  But I’m not interested in your empire.”  His throat tightened and ached.  “You’ve already got me.  So I want my father back too.”

For one long, anguished minute Vader remained silent and still, and their gazes were locked in stalemate.  At last he approached slowly and pushed him back down onto the bed with surprising gentleness.

“You have yet to fully heal,” he rumbled.

Luke sighed, sagging into the pillow.  “Guess that gives you time to think about it, huh?”

Vader said nothing more as he swept from the room, and Luke shut his eyes again, submitting to his exhaustion.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP MY PAL KAELINALOVESLOMARIS REBLOGGED THIS THING ON TUMBLR LAST MONTH AND WHOOPS LOOK WHAT HAPPENED.

Another bacta session was needed, and Luke frankly welcomed the temporary oblivion of sedation.  For a few hours his troubles and dire situation could disappear into the hollow, dreamless blank.  Watching the medical droids in numb silence, he found himself somewhat disappointed that no organic medics were treating him now.  These units were impartial to his identity. There was no one around to succumb to their baser emotions, to surreptitiously slip a dose of something deadly into his IV line or just shut off his oxygen supply mid-soak and have him quietly pass away -

Luke squeezed his eyes shut, the ache of new tears prodding at them.  His friends and comrades were still out there, and he was here, still  _ alive _ , and that should mean more than being dead, where he could do absolutely nothing.  He needed to work with what he had. And in any case, those under Vader’s watchful eye valued their lives far too greatly to pluck a hair off his head; they’d already had ample opportunity to make a “mistake” with him but hadn’t dared.

As vain as it was, he entertained the brittle, fleeting hope that all of this had been just a terribly vivid hallucination, and he’d wake up to see Leia and Wedge and R2 and C-3PO at his bedside, and Hobbie griping about challenging his injury count, and Wes joking about recording his delirious ranting and sticking it on the underground Holonet.

But the same dark gray ceiling met him when he dragged himself back from the void some indeterminate time later, and he was just as alone as he was before.

At the first sound of the respirator approaching again, Luke willed himself out of his despondent apathy and sat up, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder.  He felt stupid in his eagerness - or rather, in foregoing any attempt to hide it - but he had nothing else to look forward to at this point.

When Vader came to stand in the doorway without a word, Luke raked his gaze over him and raised an impatient brow.  “Well?” As insane as his ultimatums had been, he was expecting  _ some _ sort of answer.

“Neither of your proposals are viable.  You already know this.”

Being rebuffed should have been exactly what he expected, but it sucked the breath out of his lungs in sheer fury nonetheless.  “If I  _ knew _ that, why would I ask you in the first place?” he hissed once he recovered his wits.  “You told me I’m not just a means to an end. If I’m ‘all you have left,’ then why won’t you  _ listen _ to me?”

“Because you know nothing of which you speak - ”

“You mean I’m an idiot.  Your idiot little  _ stoopa _ son you can just push around, keep chopping more limbs off, until there’s nothing left of me, because you know damn well I won’t - ”

“ _ Enough _ ,” Vader snapped, closing in on him with a hand extended that Luke thought for an absurd split second might actually clamp down over his mouth the way Han often did to C-3PO, and Luke leaned back from him, but aside from rolling clear off the bed there was no avoiding contact.  This time, though, Vader’s fingers wrapped around his throat and his pulse thundered in his ears from the pressure.

“Go ahead,” Luke goaded him, straining against the grip.  “What else are you gonna do to me? How much will you have to tear me apart to get what you want?”

“You do your intellect no favors, young one,” Vader rumbled.

Luke’s heart raced, trying to compensate for the chokehold on his arteries, but he was beyond fear now.  He’d already stared death in the face, both from Vader himself and the abyss of Cloud City’s core shaft. “You can’t have me,” he whispered roughly.  “Not like this. The harder you try, the harder I’ll fight, until I’m gone.  _ You _ already know this.”

His head swam and gray crept into the edges of his vision, but Vader released him before he could pass out.  Feeling faint from the sudden head rush, Luke doubled over, gasping for breath. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vader turn half away, almost as if he was actually uncomfortable, and Luke took a spiteful pleasure in that.

“So you’re the only one who gets to hurt me, huh?  Is that how this works?” he baited him.

“You make this difficult for yourself, my son.”

“Stop calling me that until you start treating me like one.”

“You will learn respect first.”

“Respect for someone who won’t even respect  _ life? _ ” Luke exclaimed.  He barely had any moisture to spare in his mouth, but he spat at Vader’s feet and cursed in the most vile Huttese he could think of.

“ _ I hate you! _ ” he shouted with all of his strength.  “I hate you with every breath and every drop of blood left in me.  I hate that you’re still the one who took my father away from me.” Tears blurred his sight until Vader was nothing but a black smudge, and his face grew hot and tight, and his chest and shoulder were throbbing from the tension.  “ _ You didn’t even raise me! _  You left me for  _ this! _  And now you want me?   _ Damn you! _ ”  He was sobbing wretchedly, unable to stop.  “You...you made me...care about you. You’re the thing I...I love and hate the most.”

He imploded, folding in on himself, wrapping his arms around his knees and crying into the sheets.  Really, he hated himself as well - for not heeding his teachers’ warnings and leaving Dagobah prematurely, for naïvely believing them in the first place, for harboring feelings of yearning toward this despicable man just for being his sire, even now.  Blood didn’t have to mean anything. But he couldn’t excise the desire for connection; it felt less like a cancerous growth and more like a vital part of his own body he couldn’t live without.

In the midst of his weeping Luke kept expecting Vader to start droning on about harnessing his hatred, but Vader kept oddly silent instead.  His boots resounded on the floor as he took a few slow steps back toward the bed, and then Luke thought he felt the slightest touch against the top of his head.

Instantly Luke flinched and twisted his head aside - how dare Vader even attempt a remotely comforting gesture?  “Go away,” he moaned, his voice muffled by the cloth covering his legs.

“I cannot do what you ask.”

Luke lifted his face from his knees to glare back at him.  “Why not?”

“I  _ must _ obey my master.”

The words lodged themselves into a deep part of Luke’s mind, and his face slackened from the realization.  It was like flipping a switch and casting light into a dark hidden room. His distorted reflection met him dimly in the lenses of Vader’s mask.   _ I must obey my master.  My master. Obey _ .

The story that his father had escaped slavery in his youth - that much Luke had still believed to be true.  The only difference was that he was sure Aunt Beru carried no willful deception in her tongue. Somehow he hadn’t made the connection until now.  His father hadn’t shed his chains after all; instead he had taken them and cast them across the rest of the galaxy at the behest of a new master.

This man, however terrible, wasn’t his true enemy.  It was the one who compelled him into this twisted servitude.

He wasn’t a Jedi yet - and now he wasn’t certain he could be, after his failures - and he didn’t know, nor want to know, the deep forbidden mysteries of the Dark Side, but  _ this _ Luke understood.  It was far from easy, but not impossible.  Despair was a pit as great and steep as Cloud City’s core shaft, but the way out was always open above.  Or perhaps below at its depths, as he’d discovered for himself.

Luke shook his head slowly, never breaking gaze with his father.  “No,” he whispered, barely audible at first. “No, you don’t have to.

“Let me show you.”


End file.
